Meet Betty. Betty’s a bombshell.
(thanks, bikepedia!)
Betty’s been with me a while. I love her. She’s fun to ride, fits me well, and has just a wee bit of sass. There aren’t as many miles on her as there should be, and that’s one of my two bike problems. I’m working on that problem.
The other “bike” problem has been part of the problem with getting on the bike this year, and it’s actually a shoe problem. See, when I got Betty, I didn’t want to get new bike shoes. So for the first few years, I rode Betty with the old MTB shoes I used to wear for spin class, and SPD cleats/pedals. By last year, my shoes were getting really, really old and flexible, and I decided it was time to get new shoes. I was still suffering from a little bit of post-crash, long-layoff bike anxiety, so I didn’t want to switch pedal systems. So I went to my LBS, and bought new shoes and threw my SPD cleats on them.
Those shoes? Demon shoes.
Tingly feet? check. Stabby forefoot pain? check. Totally numb feet? I kind of wish that had happened, it might have felt better.
The Demon Shoes were never as comfortable as my old, stretched out, flexy mountain bike shoes. Sure, the power transfer was better, but starting about 45 -60 minutes into every ride, my feet hurt. Then it got worse – the pain started 40 minutes in, then 30, then 20…. The last straw was during my last race of this season, my feet started hurting about TWO BLOCKS out of transition. Sure, some of that was left over from spending 4 hours on the bike the weekend before. But when a major limiter to your race performance is the amount of pain you’re willing to inflict on your feet while riding on a pretty flat course, there’s something wrong.
So how do I fix this? After chatting with some bike smarties I know, we figured out I most likely have two problems. One, those old SPD cleats combined with the plastic soles were giving me too small of a pressure point on the sole of my foot. The other is that my stupidly wide feet probably really didn’t fit into the shoe correctly. One trip to my local LBS later… I find out that wide-width shoes are going to cost me $$$$, and oh, are back ordered until November. Oof.
So my helpful husband suggested I try his spare cleats and pedals for a trainer ride to see if just changing the cleat system would fix the problem. Um, wow. Still tingly, but the stabby pain is gone. And now that it doesn’t feel like hot pokers into my feet with each pedal stroke, I can tell that the pins and needles start with the fifth metatarsil bones on each foot, from mid-foot up to the toes, and then progresses in to the rest of the forefoot. That tells me that yes, my shoes are too narrow. Now I just have to special order a pair of wide shoes, and then Betty and I will be back to BFF’s.
zero to well, something 